It's A Battle Report !

OK, it's a video of a battle played online on Tabletop Simulator... but in this world of global gaming Lockdown I'm afraid this may be as good as it gets for a while longer!

So, for those of you missing the clatter of dice on cloth-covered chipboard here is a game of L'Art de la Guerre played on Tabletop Simulator between two very different Justinian Byzantine armies, both previously featured in the Madaxeman Justinian Byzantine List Building Podcast.

Thankfully (as anyone who's actually watched any tabletop wargame before will know) the gameplay has been speeded up significantly such that the whole battle plays out in only about 20 minutes of onscreen time. 

As well as all the action (hah!) the video also features a running commentary provided by me and Dave (the players) in which we attempt to explain what is happening, and to provide our respective hastily constructed post-hoc justifications for what we thought we were trying to achieve at the time.

Finally, to round things off there's a short discussion of the lists being used and a mercifully brief post-match chat as well where we deconstruct all of the "tactics" and gameplay.

You can watch the original podcast in which these two lists were put forward on the Madaxeman YouTube channel where you can also watch this video on YouTube as well as embedded here on the Madaxeman website / Blogger site.  

You can also replay the game yourself, as the two armies have been set up on a virtual tabletop as a Steam Workshop Item for Tabletop Simulator.